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Message: [QUOTE="Arnox, post: 12109, member: 1"][SPOILER="Activation and Product Keys"]The immediate thing you should know about Windows is how activation works and the four licensing schemes that tie into that. So, in order to validate that you do own A copy of Windows and that you’re actually installing the version that you bought, you need to do what is called, “activation.” To activate Windows, you need a product key. This is a string of text and numbers that is wholly unique to the copy of Windows that you bought. Now, there are four different kinds of Windows product keys that correspond directly to how exactly you can install that Windows copy otherwise called, “your license to use Windows.” If that sounds a little confusing, it’s not. Don’t worry. To summarize, when you buy a copy of Windows, what you’re really buying is a LICENSE to use Windows, and that product key proves that you bought that license. That is all.Now, we’re gonna go over the four kinds of product keys. And yes, the first two are important, but the second two, you can skip if you just want to get Windows for personal use since the last two only concern our enterprise viewers out there and also those who are simply curious.And the one we’re gonna talk about first, since it’s the simplest, is a “Retail” key of Windows. A retail copy of Windows gives you one product key that you can use to install and activate Windows on any one computer. The key is transferrable to other computers as well. The only restriction is that it can only be used with one computer at any one time. This is the most desirable and publicly available kind of product key to get for Windows, and the most expensive, and you’ll see why shortly here.The second kind of product key is called an “OEM” key. This key is just like the retail key with one big difference. When you use this key to activate Windows on one computer, that’s it. The key is “used up”, as in, the key is registered with Microsoft servers and becomes tied to your specific motherboard in your computer. If you try to use the key to activate Windows on a PC that has any other motherboard whatsoever, the key will fail. Now, you can use it to reinstall Windows on the PC you activated it with, but that’s it. It’s a one-use key for one PC. Hence why they are a lot cheaper than retail keys.The last two licenses are ones that Microsoft sells only through contracts. They are the Key Management Server or KMS license which uses a KMS host key to activate, and the MAK license which uses a Multiple Activation Key to activate.With the KMS license, computers in a local network use generic and publicly available KMS client setup keys to get through the installation process and then activate using an also locally set up KMS host server. The KMS host server activates the PCs only after it ITSELF is activated by Microsoft using a valid KMS host key, also formally called a Microsoft Customer Specific Volume License Key. KMS host keys can be used to activate up to six KMS hosts with 10 activations per host, so they are not really unlimited use themselves, but can be in use indefinitely as long as the host hardware hasn’t changed.The fourth license is the Multiple Activation Key license. Compared to the KMS setup described above, it’s dead simple. A Multiple Activation Key is exactly what it says on the tin and can be used to activate any computer whatsoever a certain number of times. The amount of times a MAK can be used for activations depends entirely on the contract that was negotiated between the business and Microsoft.Something interesting to know is that the KMS activation model is one that probably has been abused the most by pirates using hacked or emulated KMS server software to activate Windows for free. And one more thing to note. There are also product keys called “Generic” keys for each Windows versions that will get you through installation but cannot be used to activate Windows.[/SPOILER][SPOILER="Core Windows Editions"]OK, let’s go over the different editions of Windows, but first, some terminology. When I say “version”, I mean Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and etc. And when I say “edition”, I mean a variant of that version. So Home Retail edition, Professional Upgrade edition, Tablet PC OEM Edition, and etc. Now, with almost all Windows versions, there are sub-variants of the different global editions of Retail and Upgrade and OEM such as Home or Professional or Enterprise or Ultimate, but we won’t discuss those exact editions right now since those are version-specific. So with that out of the way, we got three global editions of each Windows version that you can buy.First, there is the Retail edition which contains a copy of Windows that can be installed on a computer that doesn’t have any Windows installed on it and comes with a retail license key. Then there is the OEM edition which contains a copy of Windows that can be installed on a computer without Windows and has an OEM key with it. And then there’s an Upgrade edition which contains a copy of Windows that can only be installed or to upgrade a past version of Windows if a version of Windows older than it is already installed onto the computer. Oh, and the Upgrade edition has a retail key. Also note that while upgrading a past Windows installation instead of doing a full clean install is rather convenient, it is never something I would recommend due to how buggy the end result can potentially be.Beyond that, OEM and Upgrade editions of Windows are always MUCH cheaper than a Retail edition, but be careful about using OEM copies of Windows to install though. Sometimes, an OEM copy of Windows is shipped with a laptop or desktop computer that can get resold to you, and when you install it, it will also install a whole bunch of irrelevant drivers along with that copy as well as automatically put in the old computer’s OEM product key. This is all usually not that big of a deal per se, but it’s something that should probably be avoided all the same if you can help it to make absolutely sure you don’t run into any really weird driver conflicts with your own system.[/SPOILER][SPOILER="Hardware Drivers"]You may be asking yourself, “Well, if some older versions of Windows are apparently so fan-fucking-tastic, why doesn’t everyone run them all the time instead of the newer ones?” And the answer to this is very simple. Hardware drivers. Drivers are software that tell the operating system how to communicate with a particular piece of hardware. So, if you get a new piece of hardware like, say, a graphics card that doesn’t have drivers written for your particular Windows version for whatever reason, you can’t use that hardware. As you can imagine, this can get very frustrating very quickly if you’re using these older Windows versions and you don’t know what you’re doing.Thankfully though, past Windows versions usually cover an entire era of hardware drivers in their lifetime, so as long as you buy hardware within that era that the OS was active in, you’ll have zero issues, and these eras can be easily over 5 years long, if not longer. And then there’s also the fact that some Windows versions have driver backwards compatibility where you can use, say, a driver that was written for Windows 7 in Windows 8.1. We’ll go over these particular driver considerations though as we go into all these Windows versions in-depth. And finally, even though a particular piece of hardware may not have any official driver support for a specific Windows version, it MIGHT just run anyway. MAYBE. Albeit with absolutely no features and extras whatsoever. For example, my Asus Prime X570-Pro motherboard with a 3600 XT processor runs just fine with the chipset, audio, and networking on Windows 8.1. Some non-essential things, however, do NOT work at all such as the security co-processor which greatly helps speed up encryption operations. Generally, this potential forward compatibility should NOT be depended upon. Do NOT buy a whole system blindly assuming that it’s just going to magically work with your desired Windows version unless you want to make a very expensive gamble.Besides that, one thing to note is, if you have Windows 7 and up, you can automatically download relevant drivers directly from Microsoft’s server. Though, keep in mind, those drivers may not always be the most optimal versions. If that doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, you can just go to the hardware manufacturer’s website and download the drivers you need from there. They’re usually listed under the Support tab or whatever. And finally, there are many third-party programs that will automatically download drivers for you from a vast database such as Snappy Driver Installer. I don’t really have any real experience with these though, so your mileage may vary with them.Another thing to note is, if all you want right now is just to get off the ground and get your particular Windows OS installed, then as a rule of thumb, all you really need is five things. Support for the processor architecture, which we’ll discuss later, support for reading whatever installation media you’re using, support for whatever input device you’ll be using, support for sending at least a basic video signal to the monitor, and support for reading and writing to the storage media you’ll be using. As long as you have just those five things, you’ll be able to install any operating system and use it in at least a basic manner, and also, of course, you can use that as a solid jumping off point to install any other drivers at your leisure once you get the OS installed.And finally, though this generally mostly applies to running Windows 98 SE, beware of motherboards made by obscure brands. Driver support may be slim to none due to the driver disc probably missing and the site being offline or unusable or even non-existent. Just always keep in mind when buying a motherboard, “Are their drivers for my OS with this board and are they available?”[/SPOILER][/QUOTE]

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